Are you an entrepreneur looking for seed money to get your startup off the ground? Consider approaching angel investors, who often step in to fill the gap between funding from family and friends and Series A funding from a venture capital firm.

Because angels invest their own money, they’re frequently more willing to back a risky, unproven idea than professional investors. Many angels are retired executives or successful business owners who take an active interest in a startup and its founders, and strive to add value based on their professional expertise and business network.

The fintech sector is being shaped by shifting market conditions, new regulations, and changes in consumer demands and behaviors.

For the past decade, fintech companies—technology firms that focus on financial products and services—have moved quickly, forcing incumbents to rethink their core business models and embrace digital innovations. But now, the fintech industry is itself maturing and entering a period of rapid change. Companies wondering how they will fit into this new era must first understand the forces that are pushing the changes.

I’m sad to announce that I’m dropping out of the Thiel Fellowship—the $100,000 grant I was awarded by Peter Thiel’s foundation.

I’m turning down the rest of the grant that I haven’t received yet—which is a lot of money—and donating what I have already received to a charity or project related to climate change, because our planet is about to get wrecked.

Like many others, I expected to go to bed last Tuesday night to jubilant proclamations by the media that their anointed candidate was the newly elected President of the United States of America. But something unexpected happened on the way to the coronation: blue collar men and women from the heartland arose and overthrew the political class. Government by transnational elites was said to be the inevitable wave of the future but it shattered against a wall of voters in the United Kingdom and the United States where commoners standing up to those presuming to determine their futures for them has a long tradition. They said “No thanks” (actually their sentiments would more accurately be captured in a two word phrase inappropriate for printing here).

In an effort to accelerate growth in the cybersecurity and health technology industries in Montgomery County, BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) has partnered with The MITRE Corporation of McLean, Virginia—a not-for-profit corporation that operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), including the National Cybersecurity FFRDC.

BHI will serve as the primary manager for the Rockville Innovation Center (RIC), which is home of BHI's health tech startup accelerator, Relevant Health. MITRE will provide the resident RIC start-up companies technical mentorship and insight into the most pressing cybersecurity challenges facing business and government today. This collaboration is an extension of a strategic initiative recently launched by MITRE to act as an innovation bridge between the private and public sectors.

It is notoriously difficult to predict the technologies of the future: who can forget Tomorrow’s World presenter Raymond Baxter confidently espousing the merits of paper underwear, or ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe being forced to improvise by an uncooperative snooker-playing robot on the same programme?

These outlandish glimpses into our imagined future may have turned out to be some way off the mark, but they illustrate the importance of producing sufficient ideas that there are guaranteed to be some good ones among them. And that means a sufficient number of creative individuals to support a critical mass of activity, from generating the ideas to ensuring that the best concepts are recognised and developed into new technologies.

You only need to look at Boston's rapidly changing skyline to see concrete evidence of the city's booming innovation economy.

Industrial giant General Electric is just the latest company to make Boston its world headquarters. Firms large and small are hoping to profit from the city's thriving, high-tech, ecosystem.

You’re working in the garden when you notice your tomato plant is stunted and wrinkled. What is your next step?

A team of researchers from Penn State University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) believes you should reach for your phone. They are building a free app called PlantVillage that can recognize plant disease from a mobile phone photo.

Behind the app, expected to be available in early 2017, is a database of 150,000 photographs of diseased plants—a number the team intends to grow to three million.

The latest in the entrepreneurship scene in Russia involves The Skolkovo Foundation setting up three venture capital funds to help startups with funding while Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) partners with a local university to create an Internet-of-Thing (IoT) association. 

The Skolkovo Foundation launches new funds

The Skolkovo Foundation will launch three venture capital funds that will serve as additional sources of funding for startups announced its president Victor Vekselberg, at the Open Innovations forum in late October. 

November 14, 2016:   A creation of $150 million (RMB1 billion) fund-of-funds is being pushed by Redbud Capital, an investment platform under Tsinghua Holdings, as it teams up with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of Yiwu City and Zhejiang China Commodities City Group.

Each entity committed undisclosed capital to the fund which will be invested in venture funds, the China Money Network, reported.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise. Today, there are more than 400 million entrepreneurs around the world -- that means one in every 18 person owns a business, according to statistics compiled by dealsunny.com.

That number is only growing. Many people are leaving their nine-to-five jobs to pursue their own entrepreneurial journeys.

Of course, entrepreneurship is not easy. The average founder’s salary is less than $55,000 a year and they’re usually working 66 hours a week. Don’t let that scare you though.

Imagine that you’re in your car, getting ready to drive to a place that you’ve never been before. Sure, you might have a map pulled up on your phone, but wouldn’t you feel a bit better if you’ve made that drive before?

The same principle applies to other types of ventures, including entrepreneurial ones.

We are creating a directory of innovation spaces and facilities located throughout the world. ------------------------ CAN YOU PLEASE PROVIDE THE NAMES OF PEOPLE, COMPANIES, AND ORGANIZATIONS WHO CURRENTLY OR USED TO HAVE A FACILITY DEDICATED TO FOSTERING MORE INNOVATION OR CREATIVITY? ------------------------ I will share the final list with this group and publish it on my blog.

Please share information on about spaces, labs or centers by responding to this message, or send me a direct email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

------------------------ Thank you in advance for your help!

Gerald SOLUTIONMAN Haman Founder, Thinkubator Innovation Spaces & Experiences This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Chicago Phone: 1-312-829-2852

Before you ever see a package dropped onto your doorstep from the sky, drones are going to force us to wrestle with some thorny questions about privacy.

New rules from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for the commercial use of unmanned aircraft lighter than 55 pounds have opened the door to what could be a massive industry. It’s much bigger than delivery drones, which are not yet practical or legal in the U.S. First we’ll see more drones doing things like surveying real estate and inspecting infrastructure such as roofs, high bridges, cell towers, power lines, and wind turbines.

With the visionary language of large federal initiatives like the “Cancer Moonshot” or provocative branding such as “NIH…Turning Discovery into Health®” and the National Institute of Health website further touting “revolutionary ideas often come from unexpected directions,” one might assume an equally ambitious approach is being taken to ensure federal life sciences research is going toward research with the most promise for positive impact and scientific advancement.  One of the calls of Vice President Joe Biden’s recent Cancer Moonshot report was urging not to accept a “business as usual” approach. A recent report underscores why that may be a problem at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Late last week Obama administration officials used NBC News to send Moscow a cryptic threat: The U.S. government is “contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action” against Russia for allegedly interfering in the upcoming U.S. elections. Anonymous sources cited in the NBC story offered no details about what the U.S. might d, but said the White House has asked the CIA to cook up a “clandestine” cyber strategy “designed to harass and embarrass” Russian leadership, including Pres. Vladimir Putin.

LONDON, Oct. 24, 2016 -- By 2020, companies will have shifted the majority of their R&D spending away from product-based offerings to software and service offerings, according to the 2016 Global Innovation 1000 Study from Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business. The need to stay competitive is the top reason why companies cited a shift in their R&D budgets towards software and services, and for good reason – according to the study, companies who reported faster revenue growth relative to key competitors allocated 25 percent more of their R&D budgets to software offerings than companies who reported slower revenue growth.

The Executive Vice President / Chief Operating Officer (EVP/COO) in this established nonprofit enterprise focuses on core functions that enable it to achieve its mission of innovation. This position focuses primarily on strategy, program implementation, fundraising and corporate operations. Average Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC) annual revenues are $18 million.     

To apply, please email your resume and cover letter with salary requirements to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Applications are due by November 30, 2016. Screening begins immediately.

Toward the end of her interview process with NerdWallet, Flo Thinh politely accepted a dinner invitation from its CEO, Tim Chen. But instead of getting Korean food with him, Chen said another person, Dan Yoo, would be joining her. The three-hour feast of Thinh’s favorite food was as top-notch as the company. Yoo asked about her career and interests, all the while promoting NerdWallet. At one point, Thinh was sold and said she could see herself working at NerdWallet and with Yoo, to which he replied: “Oh, yeah, but I haven’t signed yet.”

We're pleased to present the latest "Innovate" report for the University of Utah. Read it to meet amazing faculty and students and learn about their projects that are changing the lives of people in Utah and beyond. Get inspired, and then we invite you to get involved. The report is provided by the Internal Commercialization Coordination Council to celebrate and promote the University of Utah’s innovation ecosystem.

Image: Image from Report